Rio Post #3: The City of Rio de Janeiro

Here's a quick review/preview of my series on the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio:
Rio Post #1: Women's Gymnastics Individual All-Around
Rio Post #2: Qualifying Stages and Specialized Events
Rio Post #3: The City of Rio de Janeiro
Rio Post #4: Saturday Night at the Blue Oval
Rio Post #5: Party on the Beach

I'm returning to Rio someday.  What a beautiful and amazing city.  I was expecting a total hell-hole and instead I was blown away.  Part of the reasons for my misguided expectations was that the American media did its best to scare people away from Rio.  In casual conversations I had with people, they would light-heartedly warn me to not get Zeka, drink the water, go swimming in the ocean, visit the flavelas, or stay out drinking until 5 in the morning causing me to stop a gas station and piss all over the place.  If one watched the news in the US (or European countries), they probably thought that by going to Rio they would end up robbed and with some 18th, 19th, 20th, and/or 21st-century disease.  This article from CBSsports.com does a great job of scaring the crap out of people and making it sound like the Olympics in Rio would be a disaster.  Though Rio and Brazil definitely has its problems, I felt safe from threats seen and unseen the whole time.  More significantly, when we experienced the city, there was something around the corner or on top of a mountain inspiring a new sense of wonderment.. 



The Beaches
Rio is famous for its beaches, particularly Copacabana and Ipanema.

Copacabana was a block from where we stayed and the location of the beach volleyball and several of NBC's sets.

The sense of wonderment...A view of Copacabana Beach from above. That colorful building in the middle is the beach volleyball arena

Copacabana is a huge beach. The sand is great.  I wish we would have spent more time on it.

This is Ipanema Beach. It's more of the locals beach than Copacabana.

This is winter in Brazil...

They are expert sand castle builders in the Brazil.

We walked along the beach many times, but we never took an afternoon and laid out because we were always on the go.  In retrospect, that's a big bummer.  That's one of the reasons I'm going back, so that I can spend a few days on the beach...


Christ Redeemer

Besides the beaches, the Christ Redeemer is Rio's other defining characteristic.  It is one of the "New Seven Wonders of the World" and according to that website "This statue of Jesus stands some 38 meters tall, atop the Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio de Janeiro. Designed by Brazilian Heitor da Silva Costa and created by French sculptor Paul Landowski, it is one of the world’s best-known monuments. The statue took five years to construct and was inaugurated on October 12, 1931. It has become a symbol of the city and of the warmth of the Brazilian people, who receive visitors with open arms."

To get to the top, we took a van which conveniently left from location close to our apartment.  The road up and down the mountain was interesting.  It seemed like it was a one lane road, yet there was somehow room for two lanes of maniacal drivers, taxis parked off to the side, and bicyclists, joggers, and walkers.  As recommended we went early to avoid the crowds but even then, there were lots of people at the top. None of these pictures capture it, but there were throngs of people.

 

It's a huge statue on steep mountain.

Reverence and sacredness was not the mood at the base of the statue.

Jesus and Brazilians welcomed us to Rio.

There were also great views.

Jesus is a Hawkeye fan.  As I said, reverence and sacredness did not make it to the top of the mountain.  I think there may have been a PokemonGo stop or whatever at the top, too.

What a view.  I said it was a beautiful and amazing city.

Sugar Loaf
Christ Redeemer is more famous, but Sugar Loaf provides even more amazing views. To get to Sugar Loaf, visitors take a cable car to the top of a shorter intermediate mountain and then another cable car to the top of Sugar Loaf.  I think we all preferred Sugar Loaf because it was less crowded, strategically designed to maximize the number of people who could get great views, had a well-marked nature trail through the trees, and most importantly, a bar!  If we'd had more time, getting a drink at the bar with these views would have been awesome!

I hope those cables don't break...

The bay

Copacabana is to my left. Judging by the white t-shirt, I must have been tired that morning even though I had a great nap at diving the day before...

A sharp pic of Garv and LG

A sharp pic of Jill and Nick

Paul taking a selfie! I love this pic! It's so meta...

 
Airbnb Apartment
Adding to the awesome experience was that we stayed at an amazing apartment a few blocks from the beach. The owners left Rio for the weekend to escape the crowds and make a little extra money.  It was three bedrooms and three bathrooms which was perfect for six of us.  It even had a nice view.

Daytime View

Night time view

My "bedroom." It was actually a spare bed in an office.  The husband is a professor. I loved the books as a backdrop.

The living area.  Where's the TV we Americans were wondering? Oh yeah, it's in the office.

 Food and Drink
What would one of my blog posts be if there wasn't a picture of me enjoying a drink characteristic of the region? Or a picture of some food?  One of the oddities of Brazilian food is that for a tropical climate they sure like to eat a lot of meat.  As if they didn't sweat enough in the sweltering heat, they eat massive amounts of meat to add meat sweats to regular sweats.  I actually didn't overeat because I wanted to enjoy myself.  Plus, I was having enough trouble staying awake as it was...

Our first night in Rio, Garv, LG, Paul and I went to a recommended restaurant a block from our apartment.  I started the meal with a caipirinha (cap-a-reen-ya) which is drink made of cachaca (a horrible liquor made of sugarcane), sugar, and muddled fruit.  I found the passion fruit caipirinhas to be the best.

Salud!

Meat. Lots of meat!

On Friday night, we stopped in a trendy neighborhood in Rio to eat at some restaurant that had been recommended to Garv.  Apparently, it had been recommended to everyone else.  Fortunately, we found a cool Mexican restaurant a block or two away.  It was run by a guy who, judging by his English, had definitely spent time in the US and did a great job helping our server serve us.

Caipirinhas for the group! And to celebrate the Giffords arriving!

Tacos!

And of course, we had to go to a Brazilian steakhouse, which exists to give people the meat sweats.  Unfortunately, I was too busy eating or writing down the fourteen different kinds of meat (not exaggerating!) to take any pictures but this one.

Just what you wanted to see.  My disgusting plate of my tenth round of meat.

Today Show
On our last day in Rio (Monday, August 15), Garv, LG, Paul and I went to the Today show which was about a twenty minute walk down the beach.  (The Gifford's, having missed out on a few events, went to a track and field session that morning.)  All the stars of the Today show were there: Matt Lauer, Hoda Kotb, Al Roker, Natalie Morales.  And the morning we were there, many of the Team USA swimmers were there including Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky. If you watched that day, it was probably hard to see me, because we weren't in the front row.  But Paul was tall enough that he could be seen a little bit.  Though I don't watch the Today show, it was pretty cool to see it up close.

The opening of the Today Show

Phelps

Phelps tells Lauer that he won't be swimming at Tokyo in 2020.

Katie Ledecky

Team USA Swimmers

The Today set right behind us

There were lots of these rings around town but the lines to get a pick were usually really long.  But we had no problems getting a picture at 7:30 am.

I took this Tuesday in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.  It's not the Today show but it's Jimmy Roberts and Mike Tirico in Rio where I had been the day before.

Conclusion
I've been told how lucky I am that I got to go the Olympics and when I think about it, I know that I am.  On the one hand, it's as easy as going on Orbitz and Airbnb and whatever website we got the tickets from and making reservations and purchases and getting on a plane and then a taxi and a train and a bus and going through a metal detector and sitting in our seats and watching Simone Biles win the gold medal.  But on the other hand, it seems almost incomprehensibly impossible that a guy who lives in the cornfields of Iowa went to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.   That first day back in the states when I watched the Olympics on TV at DFW and looked at the maps in the back of the airplane magazines and then drove home from Sioux City to Estherville past the cornfields and miles and miles of minimal population density, it hit me how wild it is that I was there.  And when people remind me how lucky I am and I think about going to Rio in that way, I'm grateful and thankful that I have the opportunities to do so many awesome and amazing things, like the Olympics. 

Rio Post #2: Qualifying Stages and Specialized Events

Here's a quick preview of my series on the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio:
Rio Post #1: Women's Gymnastics Individual All-Around
Rio Post #2: Qualifying Stages and Specialized Events
Rio Post #3: The City of Rio de Janeiro
Rio Post #4: Saturday Night at the Blue Oval
Rio Post #5: Party on the Beach


We attended eight events in Rio and would categorize three of them as premier events: women's gymnastics, track and field, and beach volleyball.  In this post, I'll recount events which were either in the group or qualifying stages or more specialized events that makes one wonder "how do you get into that sport?"


Whitewater Canoeing and Kayaking, Thursday, August 11

I'm at the Olympics!

Whitewater canoeing and kayaking was our first Olympic event.  It was held at a manmade course that was like a lazy river only if half of it had whitewater rapids.  It looked super fun to do because the course was made of plastic barriers so it would be a lot safer than a real river where there are actual rocks and hidden rocks.  We only stayed an hour because we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to get to the women's gymnastics so I have no idea who won.  Probably the Germans because they seemed to be dominating.

The rapids

The lazy river

The event was cool because it was my first Olympics event.  It was also cool in retrospect because I wore a patriotically themed Oak Hill Marina t-shirt to a boating event and I was featured on Oak Hill's Facebook and Instagram pages!

Representing Oak Hill Marina in Rio!

Indoor Volleyball, Friday, August 12

Our still-truncated group at indoor volleyball.

Of the five events featured in this post, indoor volleyball had the best atmosphere.  This event started at 9:30 in the morning and we were a little late. As you will see, the Olympics wear you out so we had a good excuse for being late.  We arrived during the second set and Serbia was in the midst of dominating China, which is ironic because China later destroyed Serbia in the gold medal match.


One of the reasons volleyball was so fun was because of the canned music clips they played after some of the points.  Our favorite, by far, was a song we will call "MONSTER BLOCK" which was played after, appropriately, a monster block.  It was so popular that FIVB (International Volleyball Federation) put together a YouTube clip of it.  Play it and see if you can get it out of your head.  The other song they played a lot of was "Boom" which was played after an emphatic spike. FIVB also put together a YouTube clip of it, but it's not quite as cool as "MONSTER BLOCK." 


Since Serbia swept China, there was a lot of time to kill so they threw out dozens of giant colorful bouncy balls for fans to hit around. These were not beach balls.  These were like giant red rubber dodge balls that are now banned in PE class.  So these giant bouncy rubber colorful balls were hitting kids in the head and knocking over old people and Brazilian women in gloriously impractical high heels.  Other than those being concussed, everyone was having a great time with the balls.  We, of course, accustomed to the hyper-litigiousness of the US were amused and bemused by the spectacle.  If the arena was in the US, lawyers would have been lining up to sue the Olympics or whoever they could sue.

Get our your checkbooks IOC or FIVB!

I also scouted out the line judges during the game.  In fact, for most of the China-Serbia match, I was as interested in the line judges as I was the game.  I line judge the ELC varsity volleyball matches so I wanted to see how it was done at the highest level.  I picked up some new techniques for in, out, and tip calls that I look forward to using this fall. 

This guy is ready go make the call!

In writing these last two paragraphs, it's strange the things that stick out about the event...


Because there were also  the matches!  In addition to seeing the eventual gold medal game participants, we also saw Argentina and Cameroon, two countries who had never won a match in their Olympic history.  And Argentina and Cameroon each did their best to lose the match to each other.  But it was a fun match because there were a lot of Argentinians there and the Brazilians in attendance rooted against Argentina.  Eventually, Cameroon blew a lead in the fifth set and the Argentinians celebrated as if they had won the gold medal.

Serbia in blue vs China in red

Cameroon in yellow vs Argentina in blue

Don't cry for me Argentina!

Indoor Cycling, Friday, August 12
Indoor cycling takes place on an extremely sloped structure called a velodrome.  This is not a sport you can go out and do with your buddies because it is a highly specialized structure. Like the whitewater canoeing/kayaking, this event was cool because it was the Olympics. 

That's a bank

One of the things I found interesting about the Olympics was the nationalities in attendance at the events.  Over all, Brazilians, obviously, were the most numerous, clearly followed by Americans and the British.  Other countries well represented included Argentina, Australia, China, and Jamaica (at least in track, though more on that to come in a later post).  At indoor cycling, however, the British dominated in the stands because, apparently, they're really good at indoor cycling.  We saw the Chinese women set a world record in some kind of doubles race.  We also saw the British men set a world record in preliminary round of what I'll call the four-man sprint. Then in the finals, they trailed the Australians for the first fourteen laps before passing them in the final two laps and breaking their world record again to the delight of the pro-British crowd. 

A world record!

Hail Britannia!

This was also notable because it was the first event the Gifford's were able to attend after the travel debacle. 


Diving, Saturday, August 13
Nap time.  We saw the semi-finals of the women's spring board.  There were eighteen divers who did five dives each.  Other than the two Chinese divers and a Canadian, none of them stood out.  We also discussed how someone gets into diving.  Are they lazy swimmers who don't want to swim and tread water for hours and hours?  Are they gymnasts who grow too much?  We were way off.  According to my friend Kirstin, a former collegiate swimmer "Divers are usually short.  Unless they are quick with tucking in their long legs.  It's just core, killer leg muscles, and excellent timing."


Since we couldn't answer that question and there wasn't too much drama during the competition, while the third round of dives took place, I caught a little nap...

I. AM. OUT.

Sexy

An American diver...I may or may not have witnessed this dive.

Into the green water she would eventually go...

I hope these tickets weren't too expensive...The Olympics are exhausting.

Everyone knew China would dominate so it's okay that I missed a round...

Water Polo, Monday, August 15
Water polo was our last Olympic event as the Gifford's and I had to leave right after the first game of our session in order to catch our flights back to the US (Of course our flights back to the US went perfectly).

One last group shot!

Fortunately, the match we were able to see was the US vs Brazil!  The US dominated Brazil, but I enjoyed water polo way more than I thought I would.  The objective of the competition appears to be scoring more goals than the opponent.  The objective is actually to see how close you can get to drowning and/or strangling your opponent without killing her and/or being called for a foul.

USA! USA! USA!

I thoroughly enjoyed the specialized sports much more than I thought I would.  The allure of the Olympics added to the enjoyment, but so did the excitement of the people from other countries rooting passionately for their teams.  I want to go to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo in part because of the electricity of a premier event like women's gymnastics, but also because of the fun that can be had during the qualifying rounds and at specialized events.